Oakley Radar Pace review: A fitness coach for the face

When this review was first published, it was a first impressions style piece, before the long-term wear had been tested. I have now updated the piece with more thoughts and a verdict on page 2.

Something is guaranteed to happen if you rock up to a Saturday morning 5K fun run in Croydon wearing a pair of £400 running sunglasses. In January.

It doesn’t involve the words “personal” and “best” in close proximity, by the way. My time was a dismal 29 minutes, significantly slower that my all-time distance PB of 24mins 41secs, although at least part of that is down to the particularly vindictive place the geographical makeup of London has decided to put a bloody great hill.

Another, perhaps more important, factor is my decline in fitness over the past six months. Something that Oakley is confident that, over time, the ostentatious eyewear will fix.

No, what actually happens is that you mark yourself out as something of a curiosity, even with the particularly egregious, iridescent “Prizm” lenses replaced with transparent versions. My regular running buddy was conspicuously absent from this particular run – I’m 99% sure he had other plans, but the fact that I have even a single percentage point of doubt shows you exactly how self-conscious you’re likely to be when you wear these ocular oddities.

Oakley Radar Pace review: Radar to be different

If you’re feeling self-conscious just looking at them, prepare for your anxiety to go off the scale: like Siri and Alexa, you’re expected to control your glasses not with your hands but via the occasional chinwag.

To be fair to Oakley, the voice assistant – Radar – is very good, and can pick up on plenty of natural ways of phrasing the same question, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re talking to your glasses in public. In my case, you’re talking to your glasses in a field in Croydon at 9am, surrounded by 226 other runners.[gallery:4]

You don’t have to talk to your glasses, but that’s the way you’re supposed to check in on your various analytics, in the same way that you’d typically look at your running watch. The Oakley Radar Pace glasses are ANT+ compliant, meaning you can attach chest straps or cadence sensors should you wish. Out of the box, though, it pairs with your phone and uses its own sensors (an accelerometer, gyroscope, humidity sensor and barometer, since you ask) to give you pretty solid information as you go. For example, it didn’t take long for Radar to inform me that my strides were too long and that I should aim for shorter faster steps.

The lenses are just lenses, by the way: they’re not little screens, as with Google Glass. The coaching updates are delivered through a pair of micro-USB earbuds that clip into each arm of the glasses. They have hinges that allow you to push them directly into your ear canal, and this has a very positive side effect: usually around 5% of my runs are dedicated to reinserting earbuds after they’ve escaped from my ears.

That wasn’t a problem here, with each bud being firmly held in place. Because the glasses are connected via Bluetooth, you can listen to podcasts or music as you’re running, just as you would normally, with the glasses knowing when to lower the volume to give you an update on your form.[gallery:9]

These updates occur passively without you asking for feedback, interrupting your music, meaning your can stay relatively inconspicuous. I only really chatted to my glasses when in a wide enough open space for me saying “OK Radar, how’s my pace?” not to be misconstrued as trying to initiate conversation with my fellow runners based on a friendly new nickname.

The glasses passively detect when you stop and restart running, which is interesting, because it tells you both how long the session was and how long you were moving for, which differentiates in a way that most fitness trackers don’t – albeit with a short delay in spotting the transition.

Oakley Radar Pace review: In for the long haul

But this was just a single race, and that’s not really what the Oakley Radar Pace glasses are all about: the idea is to give anyone (well, anyone with £400 to blow, anyway) their own personal running coach. And it’s for this reason I’m not giving it a star rating just yet.[gallery:7]

Radar has me on a six-week training plan, involving me running four to five times per week to its own schedule. I pick the days, but if (or more likely, when) I miss one, my new coach will step in to move things around. I’ll be back with a full review once I’ve seen enough to know whether the feature delivers on its promise.

Early signs are good: Radar will set up training programmes for both running and cycling and will set them according to your own personal goal, be that improving your stamina or top speed. If you’re training for a specific race, Radar will attempt to coach you for your aim, whether you’re simply just hoping to finish or you’re going for the win.

I’m not expecting miracles (and being able to train me, at 32, to go from a 25-minute 5K to winning a marathon would be a feat worthy of Jesus himself), but personalised feedback is something that’s been quite patchy in wearables so far. If Radar can deliver even half of its promise, I might just be willing to overlook its gaudy style and recommend it for the runner with the money to fine-tune their form.

Go to page 2 for my thoughts based on more extensive testing.

I’ve been training with the Oakley Radar Pace glasses on and off for the past few weeks, and here are my additional thoughts. The TL;DR version is that the Radar Pace glasses are an expensive mixed bag, but that audio coaching is something that could be huge for anyone who harnesses the technology in a cheaper, less ostentatious way.

As a coach, it relies on your desire to improve

If I were to crudely divide fitness wearables into two categories, it wouldn’t come down to where they’re worn. It would be based on whether they’re aimed at people for whom fitness is their life, or at those who have to be forced, kicking and screaming, into the world of exercise.

Oakley’s Radar Pace glasses sit firmly in the former category. If you’re all too happy to skip exercising today because it’s raining, well, don’t expect the Oakleys to bully you into lacing up. The app does make a schedule for you based on your goals, but it’s ludicrously easy to ignore.[gallery:6]

The app hasn’t sent me a single push-notification reminding me of my exercise obligations, and when you guiltily check back into the app it just shuffles the calendar around, kicking that can down the road. If you’re not ready to make lifestyle changes, this isn’t the wearable to force or even cajole you.

An example of this: I missed a 5k run on Wednesday, and then didn’t get out for the next few days. Rather than making me do the 5k run anyway, Oakley decided I should just go ahead and do the 13k one it had lined up instead. As someone severely out of practice and who hasn’t run further than 10k – ever – that wasn’t happening.

Its real-time interpretation of data is second-to-none

If you have a wearable on your wrist, all the data you need is right there. The problem is that data analysis is best done in a comfy chair with a nice hot drink and a spreadsheet. I can’t speak for everyone, but I struggle to think clearly when running for long distances; in fact, I sometimes even struggle with counting down as a distraction technique because I forget the numbers. The point is that fitness data on your wrist is fine, but interpreting what it means is something else entirely.[gallery:8]

That’s why I’ve found the Radar Pace’s audio coaching so revolutionary. This struck me on the very first workout, when it told me my stride length was too long, and that I should try to take smaller, quicker steps. After Radar got to know me and my limitations a little better, it would even warn me when I was going too fast for the workout length to be sustainable. That’s some really useful feedback.

Chatting to your glasses isn’t easy

Indeed, audio feedback is brilliant in general. Not having to constantly swipe through watch or phone screens is great, as you can simply concentrate on the open road (“eyes on the horizon,” as Radar constantly reminded me).[gallery:7]

But it’s not perfect, especially when you want something specific. Radar is set up in such a way that you should be able to naturally chat to it, ask follow-up questions and interact as if it’s a real coach (“how’s my pace?” “is that good?” and so on). Voice assistants often struggle to understand me, but getting Radar’s voice recognition to understand commands when I was running and out of breath was an exercise in frustration. In the end, I mostly ended up simply waiting for the regular updates instead.

To be fair, this is an arrangement I’m quite happy with. The updates tend to be timely and full of enough detail that I never felt out of the loop, but it would be unfair to review the Radar Pace without considering the limitations of voice control.

You look like a prune

I thought over time I’d get used the the Oakley Radar Pace’s unique style. I didn’t. Whether running with the tinted lenses or the transparent ones, you can’t help but feel self-conscious wearing these specs. Oakley sunglasses are deliberately ostentatious, of course, but these ones are even more so because of the thicker frames where all the clever technology lives.[gallery:10]

Like – I think – most people, I believe wearable technology works best when it’s understated, and there’s not a place on the planet where you would blend in with these. Maybe that’s a price worth paying for the actually useful live feedback you’re getting; I’m not convinced.

Oakley Radar Pace: Verdict

The Oakley Radar Pace glasses are genuinely like nothing else I’ve ever reviewed, and that’s really exciting. I find them pretty hard to recommend outright, but I’m hopeful they’ll lead a revolution in how we think about fitness tracking.

Audio coaching is brilliant. I love being told I’m going too fast, or not fast enough, on the fly. I also love being told how long I have left and how fast I’ve been going without having to look at my wrist.[gallery:12]

There are two big drawbacks to the Oakley Radar Pace glasses and, brilliantly, they’re right there front and centre at the top of the review. The first is the look; the second is the price. In short, £400 is a lot of money to spend on a fitness device, and while you can make a case for these glasses being good value – Oakley glasses cost a lot anyway; a pair of Bluetooth headphones can cost a pretty penny too; and you’ll pay through the nose for a decent running coach – it’s undoubtedly a luxury purchase.

For those that like the look and view £400 as pocket change, then go right ahead. I’ve no doubt your performance will improve. For everybody else: consider the Moov Now instead, which offers active coaching without the need to wear glasses.